American History for Truthdiggers: JFK's Cold War Chains
President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev took the
measure of each other when they met for the first time, in Vienna in 1961.
(Google Images)
Editor's note: The past is prologue. The stories we tell about ourselves and
our forebears inform the sort of country we think we are and help determine
public policy. As our current president promises to "make America great
again," this moment is an appropriate time to reconsider our past, look back
at various eras of United States history and re-evaluate America's origins.
When, exactly, were we "great"?
Below is the 28th installment of the "American History for Truthdiggers"
series, a pull-no-punches appraisal of our shared, if flawed, past. The
author of the series, Danny Sjursen, who retired recently as a major in the
U.S. Army, served military tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and taught the
nation's checkered, often inspiring past when he was an assistant professor
of history at West Point. His war experiences, his scholarship, his skill as
a writer and his patriotism illuminate these Truthdig posts.
Part 28 of "American History for Truthdiggers."
* * *
Among the American people-if not historians-John F. Kennedy regularly ranks
as one of the best presidents in various opinion polls. There is,
undoubtedly, something magnetic about the Kennedy administration, dubbed
"Camelot" by the president's wife, Jacqueline, soon after his assassination.
However, one wonders if sentiments like this are little more than postmortem
nostalgia for a young, handsome president. JFK memorialization and mythology
are such that it seems the memories contain something for everyone. Today,
mainstream liberals tout his efforts on civil rights; defense hawks laud the
toughness of his Cuban Missile Crisis stand; conversely, antiwar types
insist that Kennedy was about to pull the U.S. troops out of Vietnam when
his presidency was ended by an assassin's bullets. To the scholar, however,
much of the passionate praise for JFK seems unwarranted for a short
administration that boasted so few tangible accomplishments.
A detached, probing view of the Kennedy years elucidates a generally popular
president who was nevertheless a conventional Cold Warrior, a tool of the
military-industrial complex, forever stalled on domestic legislation and
reactive rather than proactive on black civil rights. This Kennedy-the human
president-was also a highly political creature, motivated as often by
partisan rancor and opinion polls as by the national interest. It is this
Kennedy who fell into the Cold War-era trap that ensnared all Democratic
presidents since and including Harry Truman; ever since Truman was accused
of having "lost China," a string of Democratic executives (that by no means
ended with JFK) became obsessed with conveying "toughness," avoiding the
well-worn "Munich analogy" of appeasement, and out-hawking the Republicans
in foreign affairs. It was a highly insecure Kennedy who escalated the
doomed American war in Vietnam and terrorized Cuba's popular government
throughout his 34-month administration.
Perhaps forever, Americans will remember these words from Kennedy's sunlit
inaugural address: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you
can do for your country. . Ask not what America will do for you, but what
together we can do for the freedom of man." It is the final, less famous,
clause in this passage that rings as problematic and, ultimately, hollow.
From the perspective of a working-class Cuban, a Vietnamese peasant or an
unemployed, disenfranchised black American, JFK was no champion of man's
"freedom." Rather, he hedged on African American civil rights, accelerated
warfare in Southeast Asia, cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans and
obsessed himself with overthrowing the Castro administration in Cuba.
Our story, though, must not center only on the singular figure of Kennedy.
"Camelot" went far beyond a compelling, photogenic politician, and far
beyond his attractive wife and children. JFK assembled a team of youthful,
energetic, elite advisers-many of them academics-forever christened the
"best and the brightest." Kennedy made a show of crafting this highly
educated team, which included Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, national
security adviser McGeorge Bundy, Secretary of State (and Rhodes scholar)
Dean Rusk, informal adviser and Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger Jr.,
and his brother Robert "Bobby" Kennedy as attorney general. Two of Kennedy's
choices might seem peculiar for a supposedly liberal administration-McNamara
and Bundy were Republicans. The oddness did not stop at politics: The
appointment of Bobby was unashamedly nepotistic, and the vice president,
Lyndon B. Johnson, was a rough-hewn-some would say crude-Southerner. Despite
the odd mix, the glossy aura of the team seemed to stick, especially in
Americans' collective memory.
Let us consider, now, how this group of the "best and brightest" led an
optimistic generation of Americans into leaving so much undone at home,
blundering further into an unwinnable war and bequeathing an ever more
dangerous world.
Rethinking Kennedy, as such, is also to normalize and provincialize him.
Some will find much left to like about this less glamorous Kennedy, others
far less. Regardless, this-the Kennedy of history, not fantasy-is the
president who must inform America's present moment.
Looks and Charm: Riding Charisma Into the White House
It began with a debate; with television cameras, to be more exact. Kennedy
faced off against Richard Nixon, an anti-communist hawk and Dwight
Eisenhower's vice president, in the 1960 presidential election. Theirs was
only the second televised U.S. presidential debate in history, and it
mattered, as nearly all Americans (90%) now had a TV set. It was Sept. 26,
1960, and the face-off between the two candidates was broadcast live on CBS,
NBC and ABC. It was an uneven fight. Nixon, though a highly skilled debater,
had been sick (and hospitalized) for 12 days and was less prepared than
usual. Nevertheless, most Americans who listened on the radio thought
Nixon-trained in high school debate-had "won." The more numerous TV viewers,
however, favored Kennedy-freshly tanned and seemingly cool and composed-over
Nixon, who appeared unshaven (he had refused to wear any heavy makeup).
The common memory of the 1960 election tends to contrast the youthful
Kennedy (43 years old when he was elected) with the old Washington hand
Nixon-but the vice president was only three years older than his rival! The
coarse, insecure and petulant Nixon was seen by many as lacking style,
making Kennedy seem the much younger man. Nixon had "no class," JFK had
said, and a Washington Post editor (and Kennedy supporter), Ben Bradlee,
claimed that Nixon had "[n]o style, no style at all." In the end the race
was tight, one of the closest popular votes in American history, with JFK
counting just a 13,000-vote margin of victory. So close was the election
that Nixon believed the vote had been rigged and seriously considered
contesting it. He may well have been right: Evidence existed for fraud in
Illinois and Texas (Democratic vice presidential candidate Lyndon Johnson's
home state). "We won, but they stole it from us," Nixon would say, and none
other than a 13-year-old member of the Young Republicans named Hillary
Rodham would volunteer to search for such fraud in Chicago.
That Kennedy would ultimately prevail seems obvious to modern readers. He
has become, after all, a "liberal" phenomenon. Yet this was less than clear
at the time. Indeed, JFK seemed, in 1960, a lukewarm choice for most
Democrats in the party's left wing. Progressives distrusted him due to his
silence-and at times support-of McCarthyism when Kennedy was a senator.
Others, Eleanor Roosevelt for instance, resented that black civil rights had
not seemed a priority for Sen. Kennedy. Journalist Eric Sevareid of CBS
complained of the Kennedy image itself, noting that Jack and his advisers
were all "tidy, buttoned-down men . completely packaged products. The
Processed Politician has finally arrived." The Massachusetts senator's
wealth also drew the ire of some on the left. After losing to JFK in the key
West Virginia primary contest, the prominent Minnesota senator (and later
Johnson's vice president) Hubert Humphrey complained, "You can't beat a
million dollars. The way Jack Kennedy and his old man [the multi-millionaire
Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.] threw money around, the people of West Virginia won't
need any public relief for the next fifteen years." This much was certain:
The Kennedy of 1960 was no reincarnation of FDR. Such hagiography only came
later.
Kennedy also ran a dirty, dishonest campaign. He campaigned against the
outgoing incumbent Eisenhower administration from the right. He crowed about
a nuclear "missile gap" with the Soviets-which was, by implication-Vice
President Nixon's fault as well-even though he had been told by high-ranking
defense officials that none existed. Kennedy went with the lie. In reality,
the U.S. then possessed overwhelming nuclear superiority; it counted the
equivalent of 1,500 atomic bombs and 3,000 planes capable of carrying atomic
bombs, while the Soviets had only 50 to 100 missiles and just 200 long-range
bombers. It didn't help that the gentlemanly Eisenhower kept mostly quiet:
He refused to divulge the classified information that would have disproved
the "gap"-and provided only lukewarm support for his vice president. In
truth, Ike never much cared for Nixon.
Beyond Kennedy's "redbaiting" over the nonexistent "missile gap" and his
composure at the television debate, the candidate's success was bolstered by
his image. He inspired frenzy at campaign rallies, where groups of
people-mainly women-jumped barriers and chased his car. A prominent
journalist at the time, Haynes Johnson, described Kennedy as "the most
seductive person I've ever met." It was this mystique, a carefully
cultivated portrait, that helped nudge JFK over the finish line. Personal
appeal mattered! The historian Jill Lepore has concluded that "Kennedy
prevailed, in part, because he was the first packaged, market-tested
president, liberalism for mass consumption." Furthermore, she noted that JFK
certainly "looked more like a Hollywood movie star than like any man who had
ever occupied the Oval Office." So, for better or worse, it was John Kennedy
who took the national helm in January 1961.
After the inauguration, the Kennedy family continued to awe the media and
refined American elites. As the historian James Patterson noted, many
reporters (themselves often liberal) "lavished attention" on the king and
queen of Camelot. Jack had "unparalleled access" to the media, and he used
it well. He was the first president to allow his press conferences to be
televised live, and within six months some 75% of Americans had watched one.
Among these TV viewers, 91% reported a favorable impression of Kennedy's
performances. The telegenic first lady, Jackie, 31 years old when her
husband was elected president, would also proudly show off to reporters, and
eventually America's TV viewers, the elegant ways in which she redecorated
the White House. Furthermore, the first couple made sure to invite famous
artists, musicians, writers and other celebrities into their official home.
No doubt this cultivation contributed to the fact that although he had
serious politically opposition, Kennedy remained personally popular
throughout his short tenure. This son of great wealth seemed to represent
the hopes, dreams and sanguine ambition of an entire people. Whether
Americans were duped-then and now-is another question entirely.
Great Expectations: A New Frontier at Home?
Although JFK is revered as a specifically liberal icon by most American
Democrats and independent progressives, his actual record hardly warrants
such a label. On the surface, of course, high expectations for legislative
success seemed more than appropriate. The Democrats had captured both houses
of Congress and the Oval Office in 1960, after all. Newsweek predicted that
Kennedy would enjoy a "long and fruitful 'honeymoon' with the new Democratic
87th Congress." Kennedy, Newsweek continued, "will find Congress so
receptive that his record might well approach Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous
'One Hundred Days.' " Furthermore, the magazine noted that with the capable
House Speaker Sam Rayburn in place, and the former Senate Majority Leader
Lyndon Johnson on board as VP, matters couldn't have been more favorable for
the new administration.
It was not to be, and such dramatic and hyperbolic predictions would seem
foolish within precious few years. Sure, the fervent Kennedy would count
some modest early accomplishments. His creation of the Peace Corps
encouraged a spirit of selflessness and international service in a hopeful
young generation. Speaker Rayburn also ushered through Congress a small bump
in the federal minimum wage and modest public funding for job training in
depressed areas such as Appalachia. But that's about it for "liberal" social
and economic legislation. Most of the rest of Kennedy's agenda was either
blocked by Congress' many conservatives, both Democrats and Republicans, or
proved to be far more amenable to the political right than to the left.
Furthermore, the supposedly enlightened Kennedy administration actually
appointed fewer women to high-level federal postings than did his
predecessors. His Cabinet, in fact, was the first since Herbert Hoover's not
to include a single woman. JFK, in short, was no political reincarnation of
Franklin Roosevelt.
When it came to economics, for example, Kennedy was rather centrist and-for
the times-right of center. His tax cut dropped the top marginal rate on
individuals from 91% to 70%, and corporate rates from 52% to 48%. His
predecessor, the Republican Eisenhower, had maintained higher taxes.
Observers noted that the tax cut, though sold otherwise, mainly benefited
the most well-off Americans. The only thing particularly Keynesian about
Kennedy economics was the deficit-spending largesse he rained upon the
military-industrial complex. Rapid increases in defense spending, as they
usually do, provided a short-term bump for the health of the economy and
lowered unemployment.
Kennedy's domestic failures can be attributed to a combination of factors.
Firstly, Jack was never very enthusiastic about "kitchen-table" issues. Even
when he was in Congress (where he was known as a less-than-average senator
and not particularly hard-working), his passion was for foreign policy over
domestic issues. As president, Kennedy quickly tired of domestic affairs and
never much cared for the more liberal lawmakers, referring to them as
"honkers" and refusing to court them personally. This was apparent from the
outset. As his adviser Theodore Sorensen diligently worked on the inaugural
address, JFK burst in and exclaimed, "Let's drop the domestic stuff
altogether." And he did! This famous speech is notable for almost completely
ignoring homefront issues. This focus continued throughout his presidency.
Kennedy, in fact, once noted to Nixon-of all people-that "[f]oreign affairs
is the only important issue for a president to handle, isn't it? . I mean,
who gives a shit if the minimum wage is $1.15 or $1.25, compared to
something like Cuba?" No doubt millions of U.S. workers did.
Congress, as it existed in the early 1960s, was stacked against the new
president. The Democratic caucus was far from united. Indeed, the party was
already coming apart-even if it would take later developments in civil
rights and the Vietnam War to irrevocably break it. Conservative Southern
Democrats continued, as they had since the latter part of the New Deal, to
form reactionary coalitions with far-right Republicans. This alliance was
usually strong enough to either vote down or fatally filibuster a liberal
bill. And, since almost all leadership assignments in Congress were based on
seniority and Southerners generally faced no Republican challengers in
elections, the powerful committees were usually chaired by conservative
Southern Democrats. These committee heads often "buried"
progressive-especially civil rights-legislation and refused to bring bills
to the floor for open debate and voting. It was this coalition between
Southern conservative Democrats and their Republican colleagues that killed
all the potential laws favored by Kennedy's progressive base, including
health insurance for the aged and the creation of an urban affairs
department.
Finally, Kennedy, though seen as "tough" on foreign affairs, didn't
demonstrate much courage on seminal domestic matters. He usually hedged bets
and avoided controversy in order to bolster his image and avoid political
losses for himself or for his party at the ballot box. Raised in a highly
competitive family, JFK also hated to lose. Pressured by liberals in his
party to fight for key legislation, he said, "There is no sense in raising
hell, and then not being successful. There is no sense in putting the office
of the presidency on the line on an issue, and then being defeated." Only in
the "manly" matters of foreign affairs would Jack go "all in!" As such,
whatever the claims of his defenders, JFK's legislative record was rather
weak. Just 10 days before the assassination, The New York Times noted that
"[r]arely has there been such a pervasive attitude of discouragement around
Capitol Hill. . This has been one of the least productive sessions of
Congress within memory." Kennedy's politicized caution in legislative
decision-making had real consequences for certain desperate constituencies
in America-none more prominent than African Americans fighting for civil
rights.
Hope and Despair: Kennedy and Civil Rights
The partisans and apologists for the mythical Kennedy and his posthumous
promoters cling to the false belief that as a Northern "liberal," JFK was
some sort of civil rights crusader. That he was not. Though Kennedy was, at
times, genuinely horrified by the most overt Southern bigotry-and
particularly shocked by images of young black protesters being attacked by
police dogs in Birmingham, Ala.-for the most part the president hedged his
bets and treated civil rights like any other political issue. He rarely
stuck his neck out for the cause, and he took the side of righteousness only
when it was politically palatable, or absolutely necessary, to do so.
The story of Kennedy and civil rights began with his 1960 presidential
campaign. During the run-up to the 1960 election, the young civil rights
leader Martin Luther King Jr. was imprisoned in Georgia for a minor traffic
violation and sentenced to four months at hard labor. This draconian
punishment was an obvious attempt to stifle the black civil rights movement,
and African Americans and Northern liberals led a large public outcry. Both
major-party presidential candidates felt the need to take action. Nixon
worked behind the scenes to quietly intervene with Georgia's governor but
said nothing publicly. Kennedy, however, after receiving a telephone call
from King's wife, Coretta, decided to publicly express sympathy while
brother Bobby telegraphed the judge and demanded King's release. The move
succeeded, and King was soon out on bail. The Kings and their backers were
thankful and seem to have urged some black voters to back Kennedy in the
November election. Whatever the cause, black voters chose the Democrats by a
margin seven points higher than they had in 1956, potentially swinging a few
key Northern states to Kennedy. Indeed, Eisenhower was later quoted as
attributing the Republican defeat to "a couple of phone calls."
But what motivated the Kennedys? That would remain to be seen. Civil rights
activists, by the early 1960s, were becoming angrier about the slow pace of
social and political change in America. The author James Baldwin summed up
the feeling in 1961: "To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively
conscious is to be in a rage all the time." In that spirit, an increasing
number of black students affiliated with the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE) took "freedom rides" on interstate buses throughout the South in
order to test the recent court integration orders. In Alabama and
Mississippi, the riders were brutally attacked time and again. Their leaders
pleaded for federal protection from the new Kennedy administration. Such
protection wasn't initially forthcoming and arrived only slowly. Attorney
General Robert Kennedy would later defend his slow reaction by blatantly
lying, stating that he had not been notified beforehand about the protests.
In response to the "freedom rides" and other ongoing civil rights protests,
the Kennedys generally remained in a cautious reactive mode. After all,
though their hearts were-partly-sympathetic to the movement, they were still
Democrats in the 1960s. As such, they feared the ire of the prominent and
powerful Southern faction within the party and the loss of its votes. Jack
would, no doubt, make many symbolic moves that improved on the civil rights
record of the proceeding administration-hiring more blacks in federal jobs,
appointing five African Americans as federal judges, including Thurgood
Marshall, and instructing the Justice Department to heavily increase its
oversight of voting rights cases. Nonetheless, more often, political
considerations stifled Kennedy's action on civil rights. He worried about
formidable Southerners in Congress such as Sen. James Eastland of
Mississippi, chair of the important Judiciary Committee. In fact, as a favor
to Eastland, Kennedy would appoint four ardent bigots to federal judgeships
in the Deep South. One of these judges once described African Americans in
his courtroom as "niggers" and compared them to chimpanzees.
Furthermore, JFK took precious little tangible executive or legislative
action during his first two years in office. He refused to introduce a civil
rights bill-part of the 1960 Democratic platform-in 1961-62 and reneged on
his campaign promise to declare an executive order to integrate federal
housing. He would wait, he decided, until after the 1962 midterm elections
before issuing the housing order or introducing a civil rights bill (the
legislation would not pass until after his death). The bottom line remained
the same as ever: Kennedy lacked passion for any domestic affairs, including
civil rights, and moved forward only ever so cautiously on these issues.
Indeed, at times the president and his attorney general were concerned that
the civil rights movement was moving too fast, and they sought to slow down
racial unrest. During the height of the "freedom rides," President Kennedy
yelled to an aide, "Tell [the riders] to call it off!" When the riders
refused, Kennedy called for a "cooling-off period." This wouldn't do for the
activists, and CORE chief James Farmer retorted that African Americans "have
been cooling off for 150 years. If we cool off any more, we'll be in a deep
freeze."
Nor would Kennedy protect Martin Luther King Jr. from the obsessive hatred
and harassment of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover, convinced that King was
a Soviet-run communist (he wasn't), asked Attorney General Robert Kennedy to
allow the bureau to tap the civil rights leader's phones. Bobby acquiesced,
and Hoover developed a "blackmail file" full of King's sexual infidelities.
(The FBI found that King and his staff had little to no connection with
radical socialists.) Historians still speculate over why the Kennedys
acquiesced to Hoover's unwarranted harassment of King. What seems clear is
that Hoover-who assiduously acquired dirt on all Washington figures-had one
heck of a file on JFK. He knew about Kennedy's extramarital affairs,
including one with Judith Campbell-also the mistress of a Mafia gangster-and
of the president's concurrent collusion with the U.S. mob to assassinate
Cuba's Fidel Castro.
When Kennedy did worry about civil rights he did so cautiously and mainly
out of foreign policy concerns. He feared that the U.S. could not lead the
"free world" effectively if the Soviets could point to a hypocritical
America that mistreated its black citizens. It was here that the issues of
the Cold War and civil rights collided. So it was, then, in the aftermath of
the police chief of Birmingham, Ala., unleashing dogs and water cannons on
peaceful black protesters that Kennedy finally gave the order to prepare a
civil rights bill and gave his most inspiring speech on race:
"
The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal
rights and equal opportunities. . If an American, because his skin is dark,
cannot eat lunch in a restaurant . if he cannot send his children to the
best public school available, if he cannot vote . if, in short, he cannot
enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would
be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place?
This was, no doubt, a powerful and persuasive bit of oratory, but even after
the speech Kennedy remained cautious and sought to temper the movement.
Indeed, many rights activists thought Kennedy's bill was too late and didn't
go far enough-in fact, it did only cover desegregation of public facilities
without addressing voting rights. It dealt, too, only with de jure
segregation while ignoring de facto housing denials, police brutality and
employment discrimination. Thus, when the bill went forward-and got caught
up in the expected filibuster of Southern congressmen-civil rights activists
continued (against the president's will) to take direct actions.
Most famously, in May 1963, a coalition of civil rights leaders organized
what they dubbed a massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (in
their historical memory, Americans tend to, instructively, omit the "jobs"
portion of that title). The march was designed to force legislative action
by shutting down the capital through prolonged sit-ins by many thousands of
demonstrators. Young radicals, such as John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC), also planned to join seasoned leaders (like
MLK) on the stage and make fiery addresses. Kennedy and his brother were
panicked, and they labored, effectively it turned out, to tone down the
march. Older black moderates compromised under pressure from the president,
and, in line with an agreement reached between the administration and the
organizers of the protest, the march was limited to one day, liquor stores
were closed and demonstrators were required to dress in "respectable
clothing." Kennedy aides even read the proposed speech of the firebrand
Lewis and forced other black leaders to seek to soften the SNCC leader's
message and tone at the last moment. Lewis was furious but agreed. Had he
not, administration officials stood ready to disconnect the public address
system. Still, the march would go down as an important event in American
history. It is celebrated by centrist "liberals" to this day.
Nonetheless, at the time many young black activists felt stifled and were
frustrated by the lack of tangible results from the event. It didn't change
intransigent Southern opinions on Capitol Hill, and according to Sen. Hubert
Humphrey of Minnesota, "had not affected a single vote" on the proposed, and
stagnated, Civil Rights Act. To the more radical demonstrators, the event
had been a sellout of the movement: Its leaders, they charged, were little
more than "Uncle Toms." The fiery Black Muslim Malcolm X labeled it the
"Farce on Washington" and declared:
"
It was the grass roots out there in the street. It scared the white man to
death, scared the white power structure in D.C. to death. . They [the
Kennedys] called in these national negro leaders that you respect and told
them, 'Call it off!' And Old Tom [MLK] said, 'Boss, I can't stop it because
I didn't start it. . I'm not even in it, much less at the head of it.' And
that old shrewd fox [JFK], he said, 'If you ain't in it, I'll put you in it.
I'll put you at the head of it. I'll endorse it. .' This is what they did
with the March on Washington . they joined it . they took it over. And as
they took it over it lost its militancy. It ceased to be angry. It was a
sellout. It was a takeover.
Malcolm X may have been hyperbolic and impassioned, but he wasn't exactly
wrong, either. The march had been, on some levels, precisely as he
described. Kennedy's adviser and later biographer Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
admitted as much when he described Kennedy's civil rights strategy and
achievements in the wake of the march. "So in 1963," he wrote, "Kennedy
moved to incorporate the Negro revolution into the democratic coalition. ."
To some extent he did, but at what cost? Undoubtedly, this co-opting of
existing civil rights efforts contributed to sanitizing and de-radicalizing
a vibrant grassroots movement.
So it was, when an assassin took the president's life, that his proposed
Civil Rights Act-like JFK's entire record on this moral issue-remained in
political deadlock on Capitol Hill. It would take a new president and ever
more public sacrifice from grassroots black activists to get the act
through. Kennedy could, and ultimately would, only do so much for racial
equality in segregated America.
To the Brink: Kennedy's Cold War
A 1962 British political cartoon by Leslie Gilbert Illingworth, published
right after the Cuban Missile Crisis, depicts President Kennedy and Soviet
Premier Nikita Khrushchev locked in confrontation. Their fingers are poised
above buttons that would set off the hydrogen bombs they are sitting on.
In his abbreviated administration, Kennedy would fulfill his dream of being
an ardent Cold Warrior, pressing the Russians and combating communism the
world over. In this way, whatever his defenders later surmised, Kennedy was
little different than-and was perhaps more hawkish than-his predecessors and
successors. He regularly escalated crises, and, along with the foolish
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, brought the planet to the brink of
destruction. JFK would leave behind an ever-colder Cold War, and he did
little to usher in even a modicum of detente with the Soviets. The tragic
part, the disturbing bit, is that Kennedy-an astute student of foreign
affairs-seems to have known better; to have known that communism was no
global monolith, that the Soviets and Chinese were actually enemies, that,
in fact, the U.S. had a nuclear program far superior to the Soviets'. Even
so, with such knowledge in hand, Kennedy went ahead anyway-whether due to
his insecurity, political fortunes or toxic notions of masculinity-and faced
off against the Russians at every turn and in many places.
Kennedy had already presented his simplistic views on the campaign trail.
"The enemy," he said, "is the communist system itself . increasing in its
drive for world domination. . It is also a struggle for supremacy between
two conflicting ideologies: freedom under God versus ruthless, godless
tyranny." Despite the obvious flaws, hyperbole and factual inaccuracy of
this Manichean worldview, Kennedy would use his often-quoted inaugural
address to lay out America's resultant plan of action. "We shall pay any
price," he exclaimed, "bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any
friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty." And,
in a sense, Kennedy would have American troops, diplomats and spies do just
that. What was less clear was whether the subjects, targets and victims of
America's liberty burden had desired U.S. intervention in the first place.
Individual and collective notions of freedom and liberty are often complex,
subjective and prisoners of context. In Kennedy's (at least public) view
there was no room for such nuance.
The Cold War only heightened under JFK for a number of reasons. One was his
personal style as a competitive, aggressive statesman unwilling to back
down. Another was the continued and growing power of a military-industrial
complex that stepped up its demands for more contracts, more weapons and
more cash throughout the administration. Finally, there was the provocative
and often foolish behavior of Kennedy's counterpart, Soviet Premier
Khrushchev. Perhaps bolstered by recent successes in nuclear and space
technology, or due to Kremlin readings of Kennedy's youth and inexperience,
Soviet policy during the Kennedy years was particularly combative,
especially in the so-called Third World.
Kennedy took some of his action based, no doubt, on political
considerations. In the election campaign he had run, dishonestly of course,
against Eisenhower's supposed "missile gap" and weakness toward the Soviets.
Thus, the new president rolled out a strategy, known as "flexible response,"
as a rebuke of Ike's notion of "massive retaliation"-reliance on nuclear
weapons over conventional war. Flexible response simply meant that the U.S.
would maintain the capability and stated intent to check the Soviets
anywhere, on any level, from diplomacy to espionage to limited war to
outright land war to an apocalyptic nuclear exchange. In truth, however, the
new strategy was little more than a gift to the Pentagon and arms industry.
To wit, a pre-inaugural task force on national security determined that
significant defense spending increases were both desirable and necessary.
Such spending, even if it weren't necessary, the task force concluded, would
be a boon to the national economy-a sort of defense Keynesianism or military
welfare state. The report concluded that "[a]ny stepping up of these
[defense] programs that is deemed desirable for its own sake can only help
rather than hinder the health of our economy." Over the next three years,
the military budget would grow 13%, from $47.4 billion to $53.6 billion.
Defense spending for defense spending's sake was to be the mantra of the
Kennedy years.
If JFK loved and was enamored by the military-he famously formed the "Green
Berets" Army Special Forces unit to conduct counterinsurgency missions,
keeping a beret on his desk-he could barely stomach diplomats. For him, the
diplomats at the State Department were little more than "striped-pants boys"
who did little but shuffle papers. Indeed, as an undersecretary of state in
the Kennedy administration complained, the president and his team were "full
of belligerence" and "sort of looking for a chance to prove their muscle."
Kennedy (and Khrushchev) would ensure there was opportunity for that to
happen. JFK also funded many other expensive ventures related to national
security, such as the Apollo program-announced in response to the Soviet
launch of its Sputnik satellite-to put U.S. astronauts on the moon. Though
celebrated in retrospect, the U.S. space program cost $35 billion before an
American set foot on the lunar surface in 1969 but produced, according to
historian James Patterson, "relatively little scientific knowledge." As a
competition with the Russians, however, Apollo proved quite popular with the
American people, and Kennedy knew it.
In his Cold War adventures, Kennedy-like many politicians of his postwar
generation-became obsessed with the vague notion of "credibility," the idea
that anything that smacked of compromise with the Soviets displayed only
"weakness," or "softness," and was comparable to Britain and France's
ignominious Munich deal with Hitler in 1938. For example, in preparing for a
May 1961 summit meeting with Khrushchev, he said, "I'll have to show him
that we can be as tough as he is. . I'll have to sit down and let him see
who he is dealing with." For JFK, it was a toxic vision of a face-off
between alpha males on a world stage . with nukes. This flawed and
simplistic thinking grounded just about every Kennedy decision in world
affairs from 1961 to 1963. It would bring the world to the brink of
destruction in the Cuban Missile Crisis and suck the U.S. military into a
disastrous, unwinnable war in Vietnam. But that was yet to come.
Kennedy's first disaster came in Cuba. And here the backstory mattered.
Fidel Castro, a popular communist insurgent leader, had-in a direct threat
to American business interests-overthrown the dictatorial U.S.-backed
Batista regime in 1959. At that time, U.S. corporations controlled 80% of
Cuba's utilities, mines and oil refineries, 40% of its (mainstay) sugar
industry and 50% of its railways. Furthermore, the Italian-American Mafia
controlled many lucrative Cuban casinos. Once in power, the populist Castro
confiscated millions of acres from the American United Fruit Co. and set up
national systems of housing, education and land redistribution. These
programs were highly popular among Cuban peasants, many of whom had suffered
greatly under the U.S.-backed dictatorship. In response, the Eisenhower and
Kennedy administrations pressured the International Monetary Fund not to
lend much needed money to Cuba. Unsurprisingly, in response, Cuba signed
trade agreements with the Soviets, who agreed to buy all of the sugar crop-a
crop that previously had gone mostly to the United States and that the U.S.
was now refusing to buy.
So it was that Eisenhower and the even more Castro-obsessed Kennedy decided
to destabilize and eventually overthrow the revolutionary Cuban government.
All this, particularly the later U.S.-sponsored mercenary invasion, was a
violation of the law. President Harry Truman's earlier treaty with the
Organization of American States had proclaimed that "[n]o state or group of
states has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason
whatsoever, in the internal or external affairs of another state." And, for
the public record, the new American president-though he knew of ongoing
plans to invade Cuba-seemed to admit as much. Kennedy told a press
conference that "there will not be, under any conditions, any intervention
in Cuba by United States armed forces." It is true, of course, that when the
Bay of Pigs invasion came it was mostly conducted with dissident Cuban
mercenaries. Nonetheless, Americans piloted the supporting attack planes,
armed the fighters and served as CIA spy liaisons leading up to and during
the invasion. And, when four Americans piloting those planes were shot down
and killed, the U.S. government refused to tell the families the truth about
how their loved ones had died.
In addition to approving the disastrous Eisenhower plan to invade Cuba at
the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy's administration had actually considered even more
drastic, immoral action. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, in fact, proposed
Operation Northwood-a plan to conduct "false flag" terror attacks killing
American civilians and then blame the deaths on Cuba-in order to drum up
support for war. Kennedy and other civilian leaders refused to back the
outlandish plan. However, its existence and acceptance by the top military
service chiefs demonstrated the paranoia, frenzy and Cuba-obsession of the
era.
Kennedy should have known better than to go through with the invasion. He
hadn't planned it himself, first of all, and had been given much dissenting
advice from within his own administration. Arthur Schlesinger was against
it, as was the liberal Adlai Stevenson, a two-time Democratic presidential
candidate and Kennedy's ambassador to the United Nations. So was the Marine
Corps commandant, who warned that Cuba was 800 miles long and hard to
conquer. As was the respected Sen. J. William Fulbright, who presciently
predicted in a memo to the president that "[t]o give this activity covert
support is of a piece with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the U.S. is
constantly denouncing the Soviet Union." So too was Undersecretary of State
Chester Bowles, who wrote Secretary of State Dean Rusk that "[o]ur national
interests are poorly served by a covert operation. . This would be an act of
war." And so it was.
Though Cuban nationals would serve as ground troops in the ill-fated
invasion, U.S. Navy destroyers escorted the landing crafts and U.S.-piloted
planes provided the pre-emptive bombing raids. It wasn't enough. Castro was
tipped off by spies and even U.S. press reports and was prepared.
Furthermore, the Cuban civilians living near the landing site were highly
supportive of the generally popular Castro; there would not be-as the CIA
and dissidents had wrongly predicted-an uprising around the Bay of Pigs.
Within 24 hours Cuban fighters and Soviet-made tanks operated by Cubans
checked the invasion and inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers. Most
surrendered, many were killed.
When the dissidents realized they were in serious trouble they requested
additional airstrikes, and a stoic but rattled Kennedy balked. For this some
U.S. military leaders would never forgive him. The chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer, called the decision "reprehensible" and
"almost criminal." This was an overstatement. What the military brass seemed
unable to comprehend was that Cuba's new leader was popular, and no token
force of a mere 1,400 dissidents (only 100 or so trained soldiers) could
overthrow Castro. That would have required a direct U.S. military commitment
and a risk of war with Russia. In reality, Kennedy was, not for the last
time, poorly served by the assessments of his Pentagon and CIA spymasters.
The Bay of Pigs fiasco was their failure as much as that of the actual
invaders.
Still, Jack and Bobby Kennedy wouldn't quit. The brothers seemed genuinely
obsessed with Castro and determined to save face and win back the ever-vital
"credibility" they had lost in the Bay of Pigs. Jack would put Bobby, the
attorney general, personally in charge of the secretive Operation Mongoose,
a CIA-coordinated program to damage the Castro regime. "My idea," Bobby
said, "is to stir things up on the island with espionage, sabotage, general
disorder." And indeed he did, as agents contaminated Cuban sugar exports,
bombed factories, led paramilitary raids and attempted (33 times) to
assassinate a sovereign head of state, Castro. All of this was illegal under
the Truman-era treaty or any standard application of international law, and
it constituted, truthfully, state terrorism.
The unintended consequences of U.S. bellicosity toward Cuba were manifold.
The Bay of Pigs failure heightened tensions with the Soviets and added a
personal pugilism to the rivalry between Kennedy and Khrushchev.
Furthermore, the U.S. neo-imperial invasion whipped up Cuban nationalism and
increased Castro's popularity. Furthermore, both Cuba's leader and his ally
Khrushchev were now certain the Kennedy administration intended to invade
the island with U.S. forces and depose the government. Castro pleaded for
help and got it. Soon after the Bay of Pigs action, the Soviets began
sending thousands of military personnel to the island and by the spring of
1962 had armed Cuba with missiles, some of them nuclear. A new, ever more
dangerous crisis would result.
It must be said, first, that Khrushchev, ultimately, had foolishly blundered
in secretly stationing nuclear missiles just 90 miles from Florida. The net
gain to his ability to strike the United States homeland was far too
negligible to warrant the risk of a U.S. invasion, airstrike or even an
accidental escalation by either side of the conflict. He was placing Soviet
credibility on the line, on the global stage, with neither an effective exit
strategy nor the (thank God) willingness and intent to actually wage nuclear
war. For these and other perceived failures, eventually, the Soviet
Politburo would remove the premier and replace him in 1964.
Still, one can-given the context-understand Khrushchev's motives. The United
States had been the illegal aggressor in the failed invasion of Cuba and
seemed intent on overthrowing a Soviet ally; besides, the U.S.-led NATO
military alliance had long encircled the Soviet Union with nuclear-armed
bases adjacent to Russian territory. Should the U.S. really go berserk over
one such base in the Caribbean? As he stated before the Cuban Missile
Crisis, Khrushchev argued that "[t]he Americans surrounded our country with
military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons. Now the Americans
will learn what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointed at you." He
wasn't wrong, but that didn't make his move in Cuba a smart play.
Kennedy would later be memorialized for his cool handling of the ensuing
Cuban Missile Crisis, and it must be admitted that he did ignore his more
bellicose advisers and ultimately avoid a nuclear war. Still, he operated
within rather narrow bounds of imagination, and must bear some of the
responsibility for how close the world came to destruction. In many ways he
got lucky. Firstly, JFK never even seriously considered early advice from
liberals in his own party like Adlai Stevenson, who recommended immediate,
reasonable compromise: foreign demilitarization in Cuba, a no-invasion
pledge by the U.S., a removal of Soviet missiles followed by a concurrent
removal of similar U.S. missiles in Turkey. After all, Stevenson asked, why
risk nuclear war over a few missiles in Cuba when both great powers already
possessed enough long-range ICBMs to destroy the other many times over? But
the Kennedys would have none of it. They wouldn't "appease" the Soviets.
Besides, there were political considerations. Congressional midterm
elections were imminent, and JFK couldn't have the Republicans attacking him
from the right for being "soft" on Russia. No, he decided, there would be no
secret tit-for-tat deals-he would publicly denounce the Soviet move and
place a naval quarantine around the island. There would be no further
shipments of Soviet military equipment, and Khrushchev would have to be the
one to back down. It ultimately worked out, of course, despite many close
calls (the shooting down of a U.S. spy plane pilot, and the timely refusal
of a Soviet submarine captain to fire a nuclear torpedo when a U.S. Navy
destroyer targeted his vessel with what turned out to be non-lethal depth
charges), and thus we forget how dangerous a move Kennedy had made. Absolute
terror gripped the world before the Soviet ships approaching the quarantine
turned around and Khrushchev eventually folded. The famous American
evangelist Billy Graham even preached about the "end of the world" during
the crisis. America's NATO allies were terrified equally by the escalatory
moves of the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
To the president's credit, Kennedy was not taken in by the staggering lunacy
of many of his advisers, especially some in the military. His national
security adviser and his vice president called for immediate (no warning)
airstrikes on the Cuban missile sites. So, eventually, did every single
member of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff. Jack opposed them, as did
Bobby, who astutely noted, "We've talked for 15 years about a first strike,
saying we'd never do that." To launch such a strike would make his brother
the "Tojo of the 1960s," Bobby said in referring to the official who was
Japan's prime minister and head of the military at the time of the surprise
attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
What's interesting, in retrospect, is that eventual agreement hashed out
between the Soviets and the Americans ultimately resembled the early deal
that the "dovish" Stevenson had proposed. The Soviets would pull out all the
nuclear weapons, and the U.S. would lift the quarantine and promise not to
invade the island (though, the record shows, it did continue its espionage
and harassment). That was the public end of the deal, the one that made the
USA look strong and allowed Kennedy to boast that he had "cut his
[Khrushchev's] balls off!" But secretly, Kennedy had actually opened
negotiations to remove U.S. mid-range missiles from Turkey-which were
becoming obsolete anyway. The weapons were indeed removed by April 1963.
Kennedy's military advisers, in particular, were incensed by the deal. Air
Force Gen. Curtis "Bombs Away" Lemay crowed "We've been had!" to the
president's face and banged on the table. The deal was, he exclaimed, "the
greatest defeat in our history. . We should invade [Cuba] today!" It
wasn't-by any stretch of the imagination-but for Lemay (the war criminal who
had firebombed Japanese civilians in 1945) and an entire generation of
military intellectual mediocrities groomed in the early Cold War, the deal
was a personal defeat, a lost chance to use their "toys" in a
once-and-for-all shootout with the Ruskies! As for the (mainly civilian)
deaths that would ensue if the great powers did go to war over Cuba, that
mattered not, according to another Air Force general, Thomas Power, who
thundered to the president, "Why are you so concerned with saving their
lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. . At the end of the war, if
there are two Americans and one Russian, we win." It was this level of
absurdity from some of his most senior advisers that Kennedy had to deal
with. This, too, helps explain history's kinder view-in hindsight-of JFK's
crisis leadership.
The president, even if his blunders and aggression toward Cuba had
ultimately caused the crisis he "solved," did seem to learn one valuable
lesson from the standoff: Don't trust the military! The military and CIA had
called for open invasion and escalation during both the Bay of Pigs and the
Cuban Missile Crisis. They, along with many of Kennedy's civilian advisers,
seemed genuinely prepared to fight it out with the nuclear-armed Soviets
over a relatively small Caribbean island. Speaking about the Joint Chiefs'
unanimous advice to bomb and invade Cuba, Kennedy curtly remarked, "These
brass hats have one great advantage, if we . do what they want us to do,
none of us will be alive later to tell them they were wrong." And, finally,
late in his presidency, JFK also had something important in mind that he
never got the chance to impart. "The first thing I'm going to tell my
successor," he explained, "is watch the generals, to avoid feeling that just
because they're military men, their opinions on military matters are worth a
damn." He was an intelligent man, Jack Kennedy, capable of complex thinking
and great achievements. His flashes of brilliance and lucidity-such as this
appraisal of his military leaders-demonstrate his potential.
Unfortunately, as substantiated in both the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban
Missile Crisis, he was just as apt to cause as solve a crisis. He avoided
escalation of the ill-advised mercenary invasion he green-lighted; he called
off the military attack dogs when they sought to start a war over a missile
crisis he and his flawed Cold Warrior mentality helped cause. Such were the
tragedies and triumphs of John F. Kennedy-stuck in the Cold War box and
unable to escape his outdated conceptions of masculinity and toughness, as
well as his competitiveness and insecurity.
* * *
Kennedy's blunders included the escalation of the war in Vietnam. He would
continue to back a corrupt South Vietnamese regime that lacked legitimacy
and funnel ever more military advisers into the country until there were
some 16,000 on the ground. He even tacitly backed an illegal military coup
that overthrew and murdered the formerly U.S.-backed president of South
Vietnam. In essence, Kennedy's Cold War bellicosity and flawed Manichean
worldview would-just as they almost sparked a nuclear war over Cuba-lead the
U.S. inexorably deeper into its greatest military fiasco and defeat in a
place few Americans could find on a map: Vietnam. But that is a story best
told comprehensively across several administrations, and it will be the
topic of our next segment in the series.
What, then, must we conclude about Kennedy? Perhaps a comparison is in
order. Like a later young president who promised hope and possessed both a
handsome family and cultivated taste-Barack Obama-Kennedy seemed the polite,
enlightened choice for the self-styled elites. His knack with the media, his
pop culture chic and his propensity to surround himself with the famous and
the celebrated invoked praise and admiration from America's supposed
cultured class. This style, this image, allowed many Americans to ignore his
relative lack of substance. What, truly, did Kennedy do to improve life for
impoverished peasants in the Third World, disenfranchised and terrorized
blacks tilling sharecrop soil or suffering in urban ghettos, for the
long-oppressed people of Cuba, for, well, anyone in real need? The answers
can be argued. What is clear is that it is time to re-evaluate Kennedy and
hold him to the same standard as presidents who were not martyred. His death
was a tragedy among America's population, but for countless millions across
the world, so was his presidency.
* * *
To learn more about this topic, consider the following scholarly works:
. H.W. Brands, "The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War" (1993).
. Gary Gerstle, "American Crucible: Race and Nation in the 20th Century"
(2001).
. Jill Lepore, "These Truths: A History of the United States" (2018).
. James T. Patterson, "Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974"
(1996).
. Howard Zinn, "The Twentieth Century" (1980).
Danny Sjursen, a regular contributor to Truthdig, is a retired U.S. Army
officer and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with
reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and
critical analysis of the Iraq War, "Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers,
Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge." He lives in Lawrence, Kan. Follow him
on Twitter at @SkepticalVet and check out his podcast, "Fortress on a Hill,"
co-hosted with fellow vet Chris "Henri" Henrikson.